Go ahead, call me a homophobe. But it’s difficult for me not to view a film like Milk as gay propaganda. Yeah, it’s based on a true, fairly 
compelling story. And many reviewers are calling Sean Penn’s portrayal of the slain, openly gay politician, as one of the year’s best. But a lot of Christians, like myself, are suspicious of films that appear to normalize homosexual behavior, no matter how well-acted, cinematically aesthetic or dramatic those films are.
Homosexuals have long sought to put a good face on their lifestyle choice. Hollywood has helped, pushing gay characters further into primetime TV and the big screen. Ads for the recent Prop 8 battle in CA portrayed gays as smiling, normal, albeit misunderstood, couples. So in a sense, Milk is part of a gradual cultural processing, an ongoing effort to normalize behavior that was once viewed as deviant.
Nowhere is this blatant “sell” so obvious than in the movie’s marketing. Several lead ads for the film show a glowing Sean Penn. And apparently, Penn’s “glow” has not gone unnoticed. From Peter Chattaway’s FilmChat blog, in a post entitled And the Oscar for the Best Smile Goes to…, co-star Josh Brolin had this to say about Sean Penn:
“I’ve loved you in Milk, I thought what you did with that role was incredible. We’ve known you as an actor who doesn’t smile very much. And the fact that you smiled as much as you did in this film is amazing. Truly incredible. You are an amazing actor. You are going to get the Oscar. Because you smiled so much.”
Hmm. I wonder why Sean Penn was smiling so much? And why has the film’s publicists gone so out of their way to make sure we know he was smiling? Penn, for the longest, has been known as an earnest, self-important actor “who doesn’t smile very much.” So what happened in Milk? Was he just having a lot of fun in this role? Or was the happy face intentional?
Call me a cynic, a prude, a conspiratorialist! But I think Milk is part of an ongoing movement determined to portray homosexuals as happy. No, I’m not suggesting that homosexuals can’t be happy. Nor am I suggesting that Harvey Milk wasn’t a good man, that he didn’t do some notable things, and his story isn’t worth telling. But if homosexuality is deviant — an unnatural, unhealthy sexual preference — then the best smokescreen might be… to put on a happy face.
I agree, Mike. And if I remember correctly, Penn did a film with Michelle Pfieffer a fews back where he played a mentally challenged individual, and he smiled plenty in that one, although I didn’t see it, and I don’t plan to see this one either.
No doubt Harvey Milk was a valuable person, probably with some good ideas, but homosexuality doesn’t qualify anyone to be a good politician or anything else in life, just as being a heterosexual doesn’t.
if your not suggesting homosexuals CAN’T be happy, then whats the problem with them LOOKING happy?
stacy, being happy is one thing. Going out of the way to always look happy is another. The lifespan of the average homosexual male is far below that of an average heterosexual male. And then there’s the drug addiction and STD’s that are rampant in the gay community. And THEN there’s the “yuck factor”. Putting a smiling face on this lifestyle choice when these serious underlying issues exist seems, to me, pretty phony.